How Top CEOs Stay Connected to the Front Lines
April 30, 2025 – The best CEOs understand that true leadership requires more than boardroom strategy — it demands a deep connection with the front lines. By staying closely attuned to the day-to-day realities of their employees, customers, and operations, top executives can make better decisions, inspire their teams, and adapt more quickly to challenges. In today’s fast-moving business environment, maintaining this frontline awareness is not optional — it’s essential for sustained success.
A recent report from Rob Andrews, founder and CEO of Houston, TX-based search firm Allen Austin, discusses a CEO’s worst nightmare. “Imagine discovering—far too late—that your company had something innovative, groundbreaking, and wildly successful in its grasp… only to crush it under the weight of outdated thinking,” he said. “Sounds absurd, right? Yet, it happens all the time.”
Mr. Andrews knows because he saw it firsthand. “Ten years ago, I conducted 26 confidential interviews with project managers—five levels below the CEO—at a mid-sized manufacturing company in El Paso,” he said. “Their approach to business development and project management was bold, innovative, and delivered real results. The problem? Leadership was still evaluating them through a lens built for a world that no longer existed. If we hadn’t placed a new CEO—someone unencumbered by outdated paradigms—this company could have been on the path to extinction.”
This experience, among many others, fueled Mr. Andrew’s passion for understanding how organizations work—not just from the top down, but from the front lines up. “I recently completed a master of arts in Human Dimensions of Organizations (HDO) at The University of Texas at Austin, a program designed for professionals dedicated to solving human-centered organizational challenges,” he explained. “Taught by UT’s top professors in organizational development, psychology, anthropology, sociology, history, and ethics, this program sharpened my investigative skills and reinforced the importance of truly understanding what happens at every level of an organization.”
Mr. Andrews will soon begin a doctor of education program in organizational leadership and change, also at UT Austin. “And the more I learn, the more convinced I become that much of today’s business education is sorely lacking,” he said. “We simply can’t lead organizations with financial levers alone. Culture and organizational health eat strategy for breakfast, every time.”
Why Immersive Leadership Matters
Great leadership isn’t about sitting in a corner office, staring at reports, and assuming you have all the answers, according to Mr. Andrews. “It’s about getting into the trenches, observing firsthand, and understanding the realities of the organization,” he said. “The best CEOs aren’t necessarily those with the highest IQs or the most prestigious MBAs; they’re the ones who listen, learn, and adapt.”
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“Interestingly, many of the best CEOs experience a touch of imposter syndrome—questioning whether they truly know enough to lead,” Mr. Andrews said. “Ironically, this very self-doubt often makes them exceptional leaders. Because they never assume they have all the answers, they become relentless investigators, deep listeners, and open-minded learners. Their humility drives curiosity, their curiosity drives insight, and their insights drive impactful leadership.”
Traditional Leadership: The Corporate Game of Telephone
Mr. Andrews noted that most organizations are built like a corporate version of the childhood game telephone. “The CEO tells the executive team what they want,” he said. “The executives interpret it and pass it down to the VPs, who tweak it and pass it to the directors, who edit it further before it finally reaches the people actually doing the work. By the time it gets there, the message is barely recognizable. Then, the process reverses—information moves up, getting filtered, polished, and sometimes completely rebranded to match what leadership wants to hear. The result? A massive disconnect between what’s happening on the ground and what the C-suite thinks is happening.”
Based in Houston, Rob Andrews is founder and CEO of Allen Austin, a leadership advisory and executive search firm. He leads Allen Austin’s global CEO, consumer packaged goods & durables practice, and is also a member of the firm’s leadership advisory, private equity, industrial and marketing officer practices. Building on his earlier career experience as an operating president with major convenience store and supermarket chains, Mr. Andrews conducts searches for board members, CEO, and senior officers across a broad range of sectors.
This is why immersive leadership is essential, Mr. Andrews explains. “When leaders rely solely on top executives for information, they end up making decisions based on outdated, incomplete, or flat-out wrong data,” he said. “Look no further than Kodak—a company that literally invented digital photography but failed to embrace it because its leadership team was clinging to an old model. They kept making films while the world went digital. Spoiler alert: that didn’t end well for them.”
Frontline Perspectives: The Goldmine of Untapped Insight
There’s an old saying: “The people closest to the work usually know best.” Yet, Mr. Andrews said that many CEOs never talk to the folks who actually execute the work. Instead, they rely on reports, dashboards, and presentations that have been curated, sanitized, and optimized for corporate digestion.
Edgar Schein, in Organizational Culture and Leadership, highlights that real organizational insight comes from understanding behaviors, values, and unspoken norms at every level. If CEOs aren’t tapping into that, they’re flying blind.
Howard Schultz, the man who built Starbucks into a global brand, understood this. He didn’t just sit in meetings discussing coffee trends—he spent time in stores talking to baristas and customers. That’s how he knew what was working and what wasn’t. Imagine if more CEOs took that approach—maybe they’d stop launching products nobody wants and cutting the programs everyone actually loves.
Building Trust and Destroying the Ivory Tower
“The further removed a leader is from day-to-day operations, the harder it is to build trust,” Mr. Andrews said. “Employees don’t want a distant, mythical CEO; they want a leader who understands their struggles and values their insights.” Kouzes and Posner, in The Leadership Challenge, argue that credibility is the foundation of leadership, and leaders earn it by listening, learning, and acting on what they hear.
Strategies for CEOs to Engage Deeply
- Field Visits and Shadowing – Spending time in different departments to understand their real challenges.
- Open-Door Policies – Encouraging direct, unfiltered communication with employees at all levels.
- Feedback Mechanisms – Implementing systems where employees can share insights without fear of repercussions.
“Immersive leadership isn’t just a nice-to-have—it’s a necessity in today’s fast-changing business world,” Mr. Andrews said. “CEOs who engage with their workforce, question outdated paradigms, and embrace real-time learning will always have a competitive edge. Those who don’t? Well, let’s just say they might end up like Kodak.”
Allen Austin is a top 40 global management consulting firm specializing in executive search and leadership advisory services. Founded in 1996, the firm partners with boards, CEOs and senior leaders of companies small and large, public and private, family-owned, private equity, venture-backed, domestic and international. Allen Austin has more than 30 partners managing client engagements from offices in 20 cities in North America, Latin America, Europe, Asia-Pacific and the Middle East.
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Contributed by Scott A. Scanlon, Editor-in-Chief and Dale M. Zupsansky, Executive Editor – Hunt Scanlon Media
